Digital artist and tattooist Samuel Finch spoke to Coeval all about his creative practices and how they help him make sense of the world. Growing up with autism, Samuel has used art to overcome his struggles. This in turn enabled him to pursue a career in what he loves and has made great success within his chosen creative fields. Influenced by the graphic design that surrounded him as a child, Samuel’s work takes on the aesthetic of things such as Lego sets and video tapes. Continue reading to hear more from Samuel as he also talks about his tattoo work and plans for the future.

Firstly, can you talk us through your journey as a creative and how you got to where you are today?

Good fortune and nice people are probably what got me here. Obviously making art is something I’ve always done, as it’s connected to my autism on a fundamental level I think. Growing up with autism, it can be pretty hard to make sense of the world, so I’ve always used art as a coping mechanism, I was always a strong visual thinker so that took over my weaknesses with emotional processing. I can move stuff around on a page or a screen and reclaim some sort of control over a world that is just happening around me. Because of that, my path to being a ‘full time creative’ was pretty natural. I’ve never been interested in anything else and honestly, I have absolutely zero other useful skills. If I didn’t have art and a lot of kind people, I’d definitely be homeless.

I’ve always used it to cope with or get out of bad situations. I had a psychotic break when I was around 13 which meant having to drop out of school and working as a colourist on comic books kept me going through the after effects of that. When I came out of that reclusive period I got into tattooing and that helped me rebuild my confidence and taught me a lot of design skills. I had another breakdown and ran off to Leeds with no money, I used graphic design and photography as a way of building an amazing group of friends who gave me a place to stay, and an experience that I never would have had otherwise.

The creative freedom and encouragement I’ve always been offered by those around me has really been what’s got me here today. It’s never been a straight line, and I don’t think it is for most people, but I’ve always been very lucky and very stubborn.

What influences the style and aesthetic of your work?

The biggest influence on the visual aspect of my work is the graphic design I was surrounded by as a kid. Things like the instructions from Lego sets, the boxes for video tapes, and the box art for Megadrive games. These formed the basis of the visual language I am most comfortable using. If you take a look at those things, then at my digital work you can see the really obvious influence they’ve had.

In terms of content, I am inspired heavily by my interest in esotericism, alchemy, and the occult. Especially the objects and systems associated with occult practices. These things have always captured my imagination; complex systems of apparently arbitrary symbols used to catalogue and describe parts of the human experience that are otherwise entirely transient or confusing. It resonates with how I use a persistent visual language to understand my own emotional experiences.

That combination is the basis of my work. I’m essentially making occult diagrams, reskinned with the instructions from 90s Lego sets and old pictures from the internet.

You are located in Bromsgrove, West Midlands – what is it like working as an artist in a small town?

Having lived and worked in a city and a small town, I can say it’s definitely slower and quieter. Though after quite a chaotic time when I was younger, I really enjoy the peace of working here. I’m a very easily distracted person so I find it easier to focus with less stuff going on. It also helps that I don’t mind the smell of cow shit. Having said all that, I really enjoyed my time working in Leeds. The networking and work opportunities were seemingly endless. I probably would have ended up staying forever, but I tended to end up manic because of the amount of social and sensory data I’d constantly have to deal with. It’s good for a short time but not sustainable for me at all.

What techniques and software’s do you utilise in order to create work?

I use Photoshop for my work almost exclusively. Sometimes I use MS Paint for a specific glitching effect that’s hard to recreate in Photoshop, but that’s about it.

I don’t think I use photoshop very well, I only really use the shapes, gradients and type tools unless I’m warping an element with liquify. I haven’t really got into the habit of labelling and grouping layers effectively, so I work very chaotically (or organically), usually completing a lot of the elements then sorting out the composition afterwards.

You also work as a tattoo artist and illustrator – how do all of your creative practices correspond with each other?

On an aesthetic level at least, I like to keep the tattooing and digital stuff quite compartmentalised to be honest. Obviously, I convey similar ideas across both practices, but I like to use each medium for what it’s good for. I don’t like trying to make a tattoo look like my digital work, or make my digital work look like my tattoo work. The imperfections of a tattoo are very different from the imperfections of a digital piece, so I like to focus on the strengths in each one. I can use tattooing to celebrate tradition and handcraft. Whereas I can use Photoshop to celebrate otherness and geometry. I’ve thought about trying to tattoo in the style of my digital work but I’m just not into it. I like simple, black shapes for tattoos.

The illustration side of things is much closer in concept to my digital work, although it’s different in that it’s very loose. I can just scribble the illustrations down and have a finished piece in a few minutes without thinking too much, whereas a digital piece can take me a year of pissing around with. I’ve been drawing most of the characters in my illustration work since I was a kid; they’re more literal representations of concepts that I use in my digital work. There’s the Four Snakes (Eli, Isaac, Jacob, Sid) who are the tops and bottoms of the Pillars; Jellyface (who is a proxy for me), Cherub, Saraph, and Ophan. Even the Pillars and Spheres show up pretty often. If you look at both kinds of work, you can pick out the similarities even though aesthetically they’re very different.

Have you or would you ever consider collaborating with other artists?

I really enjoy working on projects with other creative people because it’s a valuable way of learning for me, however I really struggle with collaborating in the purest sense. I think it’s another autism thing, I can’t really imagine what somebody else is thinking so it’s tough to picture what outcome the other person expects. This can cause a lot of anxiety when collaborating or working with clients sometimes, though I think that’s fairly normal to a degree. I usually collaborate best with people whose work is further from mine, like musicians, etc.

What’s next in the pipeline for you as a creator?

One thing I want to do is make a book that serves as a visual dictionary of the symbols I use frequently in my work, explaining a bit of the thought behind them and why I use them. Outside of that I’m just trying to be more productive in general, forcing myself to create more work and avoiding long stints without producing anything.